Let's talk about networking.
I know, I know—wouldn’t it be nice if there were just a big “EASY” button you could hit to make networking simple? You’ve got VMs to spin up, migrations to finish, and approximately one thousand other things on your plate. You don’t want to think about networking. You just want it to work.
The trouble is, in a virtualization environment, networking is the plumbing behind everything else. Get it wrong on one node, and suddenly your live migration is limping, your storage traffic is elbowing your management traffic in the ribs, and you're having a very bad Thursday. Get it right—consistently, at scale—and it just works, invisibly, the way good infrastructure is supposed to.
In Windows Admin Center Virtualization Mode (vMode), Network ATC is that “EASY” button, and in Public Preview 1, it’s the cornerstone of the networking story. The feature surface is intentionally focused for this first preview release, but we're also introducing a new concept alongside it: Network Intent Templates. I want you to understand this one early, because it's foundational to where we're going.
A Quick ATC Refresher
Chances are, Network ATC is not a stranger to you. But just in case: Network ATC is Microsoft's intent-based networking approach for Hyper-V hosts. Instead of manually configuring physical NIC settings, virtual switches and virtual NICs, teaming configuration, RDMA settings, Data Center Bridging for storage networks, cluster network settings, and more on every single node—and crossing your fingers that whoever configured node 14 was having a good day—you declare what you want, and ATC says “got it” and handles the rest.
With ATC, you simply describe the outcome for the adapters:
- Management intent
- Compute intent
- Storage intent
Take a swig of your coffee, and before you know it, ATC owns the implementation. It's one of those features that, once you use it, makes all your previous manual network configuration sessions feel like a fever dream.
Network ATC is Now on Windows Server 2022
Yes, you read that right.
Until now, Network ATC was only available starting with Windows Server 2025. That meant customers running Windows Server 2022 had no easy, consistent, or automatable way to deploy host networking. And if you tried to deploy Network ATC on WS2022 anyway, it would fail without warning, leaving you none the wiser.
At the same time, we know that you can't simply upgrade to the latest and greatest just because that's where the best technology is available. Migrations take time, organizations move at their own pace, and "just upgrade" isn't always an option. With vMode's N-1 OS support model, our goal is to give you the flexibility and breathing space to adopt at your own pace without sacrificing the quality of your networking experience in the meantime.
That's why we backported Network ATC to Windows Server 2022. vMode users on WS22 can now configure host networking through ATC the same way WS2025 users can, with the same guided experience, same intent-based model, and same consistency guarantees. Whether you're onboarding a WS2022 cluster or a WS2025 cluster, the networking workflow in vMode looks and behaves the same way.
If you're in the middle of a VMware migration and landed on WS22, this one's for you.
Introducing Network Intent Templates
Traditionally, Network ATC lets you create an intent and apply it directly to specific NICs on specific hosts. And yes, Copy-NetIntent exists—but copying intents cmdlet by cmdlet across potentially hundreds of hosts and clusters isn't exactly the "EASY" button we promised you. That's where Network Intent Templates come in.
A Network Intent Template is an abstracted, predefined intent that hasn’t yet been associated with a specific cluster or host. Think of it as a blueprint that's been fully drafted but not yet stamped to a particular address. When you're ready to onboard a new cluster or standalone node, you pull out the template, tell it which NICs on these nodes it should apply to, and the intent gets created accordingly.
Same blueprint. Different nodes.
What You Can See During Onboarding
If you've already onboarded any resources in vMode, you'll find the Networking section waiting for you in the same workflow. Before you can advance to the next section, you’ll need to identify the management, storage, and at least one compute intent. If you're missing any of the three intent types, vMode will flag it. Consider it a seatbelt check: we're not letting you pull out of the driveway without buckling up.
The Networking section also gives you visibility into what's already on your system before anything gets changed:
- Existing network intents—if the nodes you're onboarding already have ATC configured, you can see what's there.
- Available network adapters—view the NICs on your nodes so you know exactly what you're working with when mapping adapters to your template.
This is especially useful when onboarding nodes that aren't starting from scratch. If Network ATC is already deployed on your nodes, the existing configuration will be automatically displayed—no force redeployments of ATC intents, no unexpected changes, and no configuration happening behind your back before you've had a chance to review what's there.
If you're currently using SCVMM or any other manual network configuration, you will need to migrate to Network ATC to proceed with onboarding these hosts. We'll cover that migration process in a future blog, so stay tuned.
A small caveat: for now, only connected adapters are displayed. If you have NICs that are physically present but disconnected, they won't show up in the list yet. We know this can be a real head-scratcher ("I have NICs in each node, so where are they?"), so showing disconnected adapters is planned for a future release.
Overrides That Adapt to What You're Configuring
Network ATC is designed to make the most common configurations easy by assuming sensible defaults out of the box. But every environment is a little different. Maybe you need to adjust your Jumbo Frame sizes, tweak your DCB settings, or enable or disable RDMA on specific adapters. That's where overrides come in: they give you the flexibility to customize on top of ATC's defaults without having to throw out the intent model entirely.
In vMode, the overrides available in the intent template are dynamic based on the intent type you select. Choose a management-only intent, and you’ll see overrides like DNS registration and proxy settings. Select compute and storage together, and overrides such as RDMA, QoS, and Jumbo Frames appear instead. No more sifting through a wall of options trying to figure out which half of them actually apply to your configuration. The UI responds to your choices, which makes the experience feel considerably less like reading the terms and conditions.
Public Preview 1: Scope Check
Public Preview 1 is a focused release, and the networking experience reflects that. For now, Network Intent Templates are not saved after you exit the Add Resource workflow. If you're onboarding clusters across multiple sessions, you'll need to recreate the template each time. So much for the “EASY” button! It's a known limitation and it's the first thing we're addressing for the next release.
There's also no dedicated networking page in vMode Public Preview 1. Outside of the onboarding flow, there's currently no single place to browse, manage, or revisit your networking configuration. That's exactly what we're building toward—and we'd love to hear what you need most as we do.
What's Coming in Public Preview 2
In Public Preview 2, templates get their memory back. Once you create a Network Intent Template, it will persist, meaning the next time you open the Add Resource workflow, your templates will be right there in the dropdown, ready to be selected and applied to a new cluster without rebuilding anything. Define once, reuse everywhere.
We're also introducing a dedicated Networking view in Public Preview 2. The initial version is intentionally minimal: it gives you a single place to view your intent templates, but it's the foundation of the purpose-built networking management experience we're working toward.
By GA, the goal is an end-to-end integrated Networking view—complete CRUD operations for intent templates and intents, and a management experience worthy of the scale vMode is designed for.
The Road Ahead
Think of Public Preview 1 as laying the foundation. The WS2022 backport means every vMode user is working from the same networking playbook regardless of OS version. Network Intent Templates introduce a concept that scales: define your intent once, apply it across as many clusters as you need. And the guided onboarding experience keeps networking front and center rather than something you remember to configure three days later.
This is just the beginning, and your feedback during public preview is genuinely what shapes the rest of the story. Jump into the Networking section during resource onboarding and tell us what you think at aka.ms/wacfeedback or wacvmodefeedback@microsoft.com about what clicks, what's confusing, and what you need that isn't there yet.
Thanks for reading,
Cindy "Management. Compute. Storage." Wan
Microsoft
